


ficlet: magic

by belovedmuerto



Series: He Kindly Stopped For Me [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Magic, abuse of mythology in a general sense, death!john, demigod Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-06
Updated: 2014-06-06
Packaged: 2018-02-03 14:24:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1747790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belovedmuerto/pseuds/belovedmuerto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is fine. He’s alive and shall remain that way as long as Sherlock does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ficlet: magic

After they eventually release John from hospital, which takes far _too long_ , Sherlock knows he’s fine, John’s _fine_ , he can feel it, John’s life-force is attached to Sherlock’s own--

Sherlock forces himself to take a deep breath. He shuts his eyes and focuses on that for a minute. On breathing. They’re home now. He can see John whenever he wishes now. John is no longer shut up in the hospital where Sherlock is only allowed to see him at certain times of day, and has to sneak in the rest of the time.

John is fine. He’s alive and shall remain that way as long as Sherlock does.

Which makes Sherlock feel terrible, that he’d done that, even as it is comfort, as it is joy, that John will be with him. Well, unless John leaves. Even if he does, though, Sherlock will always feel him there. They’re attached now, and even John’s vast, newly discovered by Sherlock power is unable to undo the binding Sherlock put on him.

Which, it turns out, is the same binding Sherlock’s grandfather had put on him. Sherlock hadn’t known that, because John hadn’t told him _who and what he was_ , and Sherlock never saw it. 

But that’s neither here nor there, because John hasn’t left yet. He doesn’t speak to Sherlock, hasn’t since he woke up in hospital. He didn’t even speak to Sherlock the whole time they were at Sherlock’s mum’s house. 

He still isn’t speaking to Sherlock, and Sherlock hates it. But he’ll take it, because at least John is there. In the flat. He can see that John is alive, visually confirm it every day, even if John won’t let him get close enough to physically confirm it. He can see it, though, in each breath John takes, while Sherlock surreptitiously watches him (he’s sure John knows, that John feels his gaze like a physical weight).

It actually started in that alley, that dank and dark little piece of London where John had nearly died, where he’d collapsed in Sherlock’s arms, bleeding his life out on the pavement, on Sherlock’s trousers, and said those _things_. Confusing things, wonderful things, things that Sherlock wants etched into his skin, and things that Sherlock has been trying to delete ever since.

John had taken that last, shuddering breath, a soft smile on his bloody lips, after pouring himself out, into Sherlock’s soul, and started to blur a bit around the edges, though that may have been because Sherlock was crying. Sobbing, really. Just as Sherlock had slashed his own wrist open, starting murmuring ancient words of binding in great, gasping, desperate breaths, sealing them together with magic he was never meant to know, let alone wield, he’d smelled flowers, the sun and the sea, stone and wine. All scents of home, of Olympos and his mother and his fucked up family.

At the time he’d dismissed it as a side effect of his own magic.

Perhaps that was a hasty decision.

He feels it now, sometimes. He’d felt it once or twice in the hospital, when he’d been drained of all but his own heartbeat, when he knew he was entirely incapable of magic, barely even capable of the rational thought he’d built his current life on. And now he knows, this isn’t him at all. This is John. John’s true nature, John’s magic. Or his proto-magic. His power, that all other magic pales beside, that all other magic aspires to be. Death and life, all rolled up in one jumper clad ex-Army doctor with a bum shoulder and, it turns out, a really fearsome temper.

It seems to happen when John is distressed or upset or angry (he’s angry rather often of late), or when Sherlock is distressed or despairing or in the throes of an epic strop.

Sherlock cannot see it, except on those rare occasions when John is actually looking at him at the same time as it happens, and Sherlock sees his deep blue eyes gone black and star-pricked. John is always quick to look away again, and Sherlock is almost afraid he could drown in those eyes, or perhaps float away, never to return to his own body. He’s not sure he would mind that, as long as he was with John. 

Sherlock cannot even really feel it, although he usually ends up with goosebumps. Occasionally there is something of a soft breeze, ruffling his hair or his dressing gown. Mostly, he only knows that John’s power is leaking out, seeping through the flat, filling all the nooks and crannies by the way the flat starts to smell.

It nearly always reminds Sherlock of one of two things: either home, with the scent of grapes and pomegranate and the sea and the mountain his mother lived upon; or John. Increasingly, all he can smell are things that he associates with John. His cheap shower gel or his aftershave or the cologne he used to wear when he’d take some woman or other out on a date, hoping she would have sex with him. (He hasn’t been on any dates in a long time. Sherlock takes that as a good sign. He has hope.) The smell of John that gets caught in his dressing gown or a jumper that he’s worn a few times between washings. The smell of his hair, that Sherlock won’t admit to knowing because that would mean admitting that he might have smelled John’s hair while he was asleep in hospital (and possibly once or twice since, though he’d had to resort to magic of his own in order to approach a sleeping John without waking him).

Mrs Hudson always asks where the flowers are, in the aftermath of John’s magic. John has always fled by that point, out for a walk or up to his room to gather himself, so he doesn’t do anything drastic, though what he could do to Sherlock, Sherlock doesn’t know. Sometimes he desperately wants to know. Other times he desperately does not.

He’s never sure what to tell her, when she asks. Because there’s never any flowers to show her, and she knows better than to believe him if he says that it’s air freshener or a candle. If she’s asked John, he doesn’t say, although Sherlock is certain he hasn’t been forthcoming with her if she has.

Sometimes, Sherlock wonders if John even knows it’s happening, although he must, mustn’t he? He leaves afterwards, but perhaps that’s because he’s realized it and is trying to rein it in. Perhaps. Sherlock doesn’t know, and he cannot ask, not right now when John still isn’t speaking to him.


End file.
